


The Phantoms of their Second Battlefield

by reafterthought



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02, 無彩限のファントム・ワールド | Musaigen no Phantom World | Myriad Colors Phantom World (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Character Study, Drabble Collection, Gen, characters with magic powers, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, word count: 999-3000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26122459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reafterthought/pseuds/reafterthought
Summary: First they were Chosen fighting in the digital world, then their powers blossoms and they found themselves fighting phantoms in their own. But fate has a funny way of running in circles.
Kudos: 4
Collections: The DFC Challenge Collection





	1. Jyou

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, d15 - write using the pathetic fallacy device

It started with Jyou, sort of. Phantoms were running rampant, the hype about digimon had settled down for the most part, and his memory retention suddenly evolved from ordinary to extraordinary. He managed to avoid being recruited the first year of high school though.

Then Taichi and Yamato and Sora, and Taichi just can't say no and the others are dragged along. And then Jyou joins too because, as a group, they have a tendency to attract trouble even out of the Digital World, and the four of them become a quickly efficient team, much to the surprise of already established teams.

But just because they hadn't hunted phantoms before, didn't mean they weren't used to fighting. Even if, back then, they had their digimon partners by their side. But they've got their elements and some rather innocent abilities of their youth that have wound up magic and they manage. They manage all too well.

It's not until Takeru's powers awaken in fifth grade that they manage to get their digimon partners into the real world to aid them, though. They call it phantom summoning, of course, because they don't want or need to explain digimon as a separate entity and they get the job done anyway.

That's around the time they wind up splitting into two teams, too. Koushiro's part-timing with the research institute and Jyou's transferred to a school more heavily focused on the sciences, and there's a few new kids to consider in the mix when the digital world comes seeking its Chosen again.

Two groups of six wind up pretty balanced, and the club adviser thinks that's overkill sometimes but they get the toughest jobs, the ones that are more life and world saving than ben-kei mimics on the bridge or the monkey hot spring at the school… And some of the younger kids are chirpy at first but they understand soon enough, the weight of destiny that had swept them into wards on two fronts.

And really, Jyou thinks as he returns their jealous stares, they don't know how lucky they are to have never had the weight of the world on their shoulders.


	2. Taichi

It was many little boys' dreams to be heroes, but he's had too much of a taste of it after the digital world.

And then there are the phantoms. Monsters of a different flavour and, at the beginning, he doesn't even have Agumon to help. But he does have Agumon's fire, and a certain charisma that has become almost magic in how it feeds not only the flames, but the others' newfound powers as well.

But he has the power, and the ability, and even some of the experience. He can't turn away after all that. He couldn't have turned away from the digital world either, even if they had been trapped with no way out at the time.

He can't ignore the phantoms when they're at school, on the way home, all over the news.

And he knows he's pulled the others in as well, because they can't ignore him or them.

So he throws around fire and confidence and relies on Yamato and Jyou to douse those flames if he gets carried away, and Sora to point them in the right direction, and his little sister to tell him when not to fire at all, and they go on saving the world and the life of a hero gets less glamorous, more heavy, but he grins his way through it all.

And then the digital world comes calling again. He winds up mentoring Daisuke and he stops grinning as much then, partially because the other's grin is as infectious as his own and they've occasionally wound up in painful laughing fits because of it, but also because he doesn't want this kid repeating his mistakes (like SkullGreymon), and maybe his smiles become a little more honest out of it. Especially when they've made it four years now and he's more a mediator for a government than a front line man and Daisuke's holding the home front with lots of little mistakes dotting his record but nothing that's gotten someone else mutated or badly hurt or killed, and he'll count that as a win by association.


	3. Sora

She loved the breeze, but she wasn't a flier until the digital world. Not like Miyako who might have been born on the back of a bird and stayed there through her youth. She can't fly, anyway. It's Piyimon who carries her in the digital world, and the wind who can manage very short bursts afterwards, on the battlefront with the phantoms. But people hear wind and think she can do amazing things with it.

She can, she supposes, but it's more amazing with Mimi's plants and the mix of fragrances that can put an entire battlefield to sleep. Because none of them really want to fight to the end of time. But imaginations are such that they'll continue for as long as there are people who can think and dream.

The better battles are the ones where they don't have to fight, but those are hardly ever given to them. And it's Mimi who does the sweet-talking. Hikari, sometimes. Sora wishes she had that sort of ability as well, and she does as far as humans are concerns but it's not a magic power that'll work on the phantoms. She does have some healing ability, though. She can heal friend and foe alike, and she wishes that was somehow related to the digital world like most their other powers, but it doesn't seem to be. She couldn't save Patamon or Picollomon or Leomon...

But when Daisuke is a little too reckless and fries himself along with his enemies, Sora can patch him up good as new. When Miyako's flown too high or Iori's dug too deep, she can reverse the hypoxia fairly quickly. Ken and Hikari and their demons she can't help with so much, not with the special powers anyway, but she's the Chosen of love and she can give them that much and it helps, some.

When she graduates, she worries. She's not even a doctor. She has no intention of becoming one; that's all Jyou. But Jyou doesn't have healing powers. Hikari does, though. Hers take longer to work, to heal. Maybe that's better, though. It gives them chances to rest in between. But they're all the sort to worry, to feel guilty when others take dangerous work and get hurt while they're laid up. But Daisuke has a sunny disposition in spades that balances that out.

They're a good team, those six. And Sora feels a little guilty not joining the government like some of the others: like Koushiro, and Taichi, and Jyou. But they also need somewhere outside of the battlefield: a place of peace and beauty to return to: a garden with a nice gentle breeze.


	4. Yamato

It makes sense that he is ice, when Taichi is fire. Taichi is always in the lead, anyway. The one who blazes the trail and Yamato's the one who reigns him in sometimes and enables him otherwise.

That's fine. That's the sort of fragile balance they fell into in the digital world, and now he has a power that can be run right over by his ice.

But there are other ways to douse fire that isn’t stealing oxygen or soaking in water. Other ways to make Taichi stop and think for even a moment longer than his otherwise would. Sometimes it’s just playing devil’s advocate. Sometimes it’s punching (or even slapping) him across the face. Sometimes it’s hitting him with a blast of ice when he gets too hot-headed. Sometimes it’s trying, in vain, to stop his fires from getting out of control.

Sometimes it’s even making a snowstorm when Taichi’s worn himself out or fire’s just not stopping their enemy in their tracks. And the new team doesn’t have nearly as much firepower as the six of them, though with Daisuke’s thunder, Miyako’s gales and Iori’s earth power, they manage well enough. Not perfectly, but well enough. And they have the advantage of mentors on two fronts, and enough experience to (hopefully) not repeat the same, near-fatal mistakes.

Though their original team never had a Digimon Kaiser to deal with. And he’s certain he’s never been quite as socially awkward as Ken (and neither as Koushiro, but combined they probably have enough comparable stories). None of them have that sort of mental ability, either. They’d been so sure it’d be the dark spore if anything, but it wasn’t. Not quite. One can even say it was the guilt personified.

Jyou, funnily enough, deals with it best. Because his powers – memory retention and projection – were the closest. But Yamato couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had something like that instead of plain old ice: powerful, but simple clay he could craft into whatever he liked. It was kinder, almost. Not like Takeru and his ability to basically bring hope alive. Not like Hikari and Sora and their healing powers. Not like Jyou. Those mental abilities depended far more on emotions, on control and keeping calm in the eye of the storm.

And Yamato wonders if that means his demons aren’t comparable to them… But then again, he knows Sora’s demons well, and they’ve all got pretty brutal demons of their own even without the digital world and not all of them have psychic powers. Coincidence, perhaps. They didn’t all follow their affinities in the digital world, at the end. They didn’t need to, either. They were two solid teams. They were miracle workers when they were together, still fighting to save the world.


	5. Mimi

Mimi was never a nature girl before Palmon, but then there’s Palmon and the crest of sincerity, and that trickles into her real world powers when fighting the phantoms and she’s surrounded.

She doesn’t mind it too much. It’s more defensive than offensive and it means she can protect and divert without doing too much of the hurting or the muscle-work herself. It’s the perfect power for her, almost.

More perfect, likely, would be no powers at all but as the years go by, she wonders if that’s really too. Years on various battlefields tell her she’s not the sort to stand back and do nothing. Stand back and man the defensive lines is one thing. Hide behind someone else’s defences because she’s powerless – and that’s happened on a few occasions even in more recent times – is another thing entirely.

And her plants have interesting abilities. Koushiro has fun exploring them. Jyou even claims some of them to give to his girlfriend in the pharmaceutical department (and she’s more than happy to help with that endeavour, even if not for the reasons Jyou claims them for). They work well with Hikari’s healing abilities, too, and she makes sure to send a bouquet every now and then when she hears that second team’s gotten in to a bit of strife. Sometimes she even lets Sora doctor it a little first. She’s picked up some skill in flower arrangements from her mother, after all.

But she has to say, sometimes she misses getting her blood pumping and her hands dirty, and her plants will instead twist around monsters and bind them instead of creating pollinous barricades, and that was fine as well. They let her adapt. They play to her moods, and her strengths, and her need for power to make a change and she knows she’s not the only one – in their team or outside – like that, and she might not have charisma as a special power like Taichi but she has enough of it to be a national television star some years down the track and say her piece. She’s a bit of a poster girl, even, but that’s fine; everyone who deals with her knows she’s sincere and that’s the more important thing.


	6. Koushirio

It’s Jyou who manifests his powers first, Taichi who drags them all into the war against the phantoms, Takeru who brings their partners back to them and Ken who gives him the final puzzle pieces with his unique powers, but Koushiro who manages to put it all together.

He wonders, at first, why his ability is lightning and a knack of finding whatever piece of information he needs for information or books. Why he doesn’t have any power over data itself. Why, later, it is Ichijouji Ken who can manipulate both data and people’s emotions (even if, at the beginning, accidental bursts of power led to him retching in the boys’ bathrooms). But only when he’s able to wipe phantoms off the map simply be dismantling their data that Koushiro understands.

And he understands why it was never easier, as well.

Digimon are made of data. Data, and also emotion. Phantoms are made of emotions, too, but they’d thought that was it. Until summoners like Takeru came along, summoning phantoms of their own from words or images or data.

And data is relatively straightforward to delete. When Koushiro is hacking the national database more than once, Ken is covering his tracks flawlessly for him. When the phantoms have been out for a while, gaining experiences and emotions, then it’s harder. And Ken has nothing like Koushiro’s thunder to protect himself.

At least Daisuke’s never far off, or the others. They’ve got quite clear strengths and weaknesses, but their teamwork trumps all. Still, it’s not until Ken polishes off a newly sprouted phantom that Koushiro realises it, that phantoms are like digimon and that’s not just a convenient like they’ve told when Takeru brought their partners back to them.

It doesn’t matter, though. They made the choice to fight a long time ago. If there’d ever been a choice at all.

He can’t say he regrets it though. It’s a realisation, but not one that will change them, or the world.


End file.
